EU/EEA

According to EU law the prevailing divergences between the national tax systems shall not be corrected by unilateral measures that grant fiscal advantages to firms, which are affected by the disparities between tax systems[1]. Equally, the corrections implemented unilaterally that mean to neutralise the disparities between tax systems shall be aligned with the logic of…

Today the European Commission released its first set of decisions on corporate tax rulings, which it has investigated for over a year. Starbucks Manufacturing EMEA and Fiat Finance and Trade were the first test cases where final decisions have been issued. At this point in time, only press releases are available. Formal decisions will be…

The scope of the present article will be narrow. The aim is to point out a misinterpretation of the Cadbury ruling, which might have caused a flawed theory of the compatibility of certain CFC regimes with EU law. I do not use the appellative “flawed” to sound overconfident, but because in my view, good law…

As a woman, I naturally think that women are wonderful creatures. We are sociable, charming, caring and (almost) always the radiant center of attention. But unfortunately we are accused of having a number of negative traits: apparently we give off conflicting signals, are unable to make decisions and keep raking up the past. In my…

The establishment of a link between the financial interests of the Union and the general budget of the Union is the reason why the domestic penalties made applicable in matters of VAT fraud are covered by Union law. On 8 September 2015 the Court of Justice of the EU (“CJEU”) issued its ruling in Taricco,…

In a recent post, Professor Werner Haslehner raised an interesting discussion on the new wording of Article 4.1 (a) of the Parent-Subsidiary Directive (“PSD”), which obliges the Member State of the parent company to tax the dividends received to the extent that the corresponding payment are deductible from the corporate income tax paid by the…

This is another lone voice cry in the wilderness – I am getting used to that. By 9 September 2015, anyone who has an opinion about further corporate tax transparency in Europe, are invited to file it (or forever hold their peace?). Those opinions must not be filed with DG-Taxud, but the EU General Directorate…

The case brings about the opportunity to fill a gap in the Norwegian tax law. In order to determine the fiscal residence of a corporation, the current formula stipulated by art. 2(2) Tax Act uses the notion of ‘belonging to the jurisdiction’, while the OECD model employs the term ‘place of effective management’[1] as a…

On 17 June 2015, the Commission adopted a plan to relaunch the 3CTB (Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base), a common system for calculating the tax base of businesses operating in the EU. Except, it did not, it announced that it would start with a modified 2CTB (Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base) instead. ************** BEPS is…

Due to an amendment of the EU Parent-Subsidiary Directive, the EU Member States must include a common minimum anti-abuse provision in their legislation by 31 December 2015 at the latest. The common minimum anti-abuse provision is contained in Art. 1(2) and (3) of the Parent-Subsidiary Directive (which grants exemptions on payments of dividend in the…

There are a lot of opinions on multinationals and their tax practices. One conventional perception is that multinationals have a general tax advantage over their domestic competitors as their international operations allow for substantial tax management to minimize the corporate tax burden at group level. A number of tax policy projects are in process and…

Following my latest post on the Court of Justice’s decision in Commission v UK (C-172/13, ECLI:EU:C:2015:50), I want to turn in this comment on the related issue of currency losses, which was recently addressed by Advocate General Kokott in her Opinion in case X AB v Skatteverket (C-686/13, ECLI:EU:C:2015:31). The Advocate General concludes that Member…

Let’s go back a few weeks, to March 18, 2015. The EU Commission announces its much heralded Tax Transparency package. The package contains a surprise element: the link to the Code of Conduct Report of 1999. To refresh memories: this report, lead by a UK national, contained 66 harmful tax measures. The 66 could be…

After the first post on BEPS, I decided to go laterally and approach an issue that may resonate to many tax practitioners but unfortunately is not so widely discussed perhaps because of its interdisciplinary impacts – what are the consequences and limits for this “rush” towards massification of tax information data retrieval and exchange. We…